Gardening in the winter

I have been busy plowing the soil in the garden and making leaf mold for the next spring. There were too much gravel and construction debris buried in the ground. I know some constructors used to do that before we moved here. Some of them have bothered the shrubbery of azalea along the entrance road to our home to grow enough. I decided to clear those bothering gravel etc from the soil under the shrubbery.

The gardener of almost the same age as mine has helped me with this project. He is a retiree from a local municipal office having worked there for gardening/park management for decades. Long before retirement, he decided to go on gardening as his profession. He has studied about gardening and obtained a national license. Speniding a couple of years under another gardener as a trainee, he has started his own business. His love and enthusiasm for gardening and trees are amazing. He seems to be happier than ever working in gardens. Looking at some tree for a while as he often is, he admires how beautiful and grand it is. I have learned a lot from him as for not only the technique of gardening but also the love for plants/trees. Being asked how long he would go on working, he answered, smiling gently, that he would do it as long as his health permits it. He is an amateur flutist as well. My wife has known him through her flutist teacher. That is why we have asked him to work at our home. It was my pleasure to know him as a friend of mine. 

With the help of this reliable gardener, I have finished this project a few weeks ago. It was a tough work. There should be even more debris left in the other parts of ground. As my wife always says, however, I would let it stay there since this is not our eternal home. The gardener has approved my idea to make leaf mold at the place where we digged out the debris. We have put the fallen leaves, which had been from the zelkova tree, magnolia, persimmon trees or chestnut tree, into the digged holes. The soil sifted to get rid of the debris has been returned there on the fallen leaves. The ground will become water maintaining leaf mold good for farming by next spring. Strawberry close to the ground will be lead to that places with runners next summer. I could grow some tomato plants as well.

I have also made flower beds in the other parts of the garden. Using the leaf mold already made from leaves etc at a corner of the garden, I have made them, where my wife has planted pansies a couple of weeks ago. The flowers are still blooming despite of this extreme cold wave. They might go on pleasing us with tiny lovely flowers until next spring.

Some veggies are still growing in this hard weather. A chinese cabbage is grown even though it has been bitten by bugs. These bites by bugs mean no chemical pesticide has been used.

It will be the winter solstice very soon. It will be the time when sun starts to shine longer and brighter. Hopefully, we could step into that season of hope blessed with good health.

The beginning of music

Recent studies show the capability to recognize the flow of sound as segments is provided a priori. It is being confirmed not only in ontogeny but also in phylogeny. They assume it is the basis for the development of laqnguage in human.

When first heard of this finding, I thought it might have brought us music. The flow of sound itself is the most primitive form of music. If this finding is right, music could preceed  phylogenetically acuisition of language. That could be the reason why music affects us most deeply in our emotion. Listening to the sound of nature, our ancestors may mimic it with their voice, that might become tune. That process seems like a kind of religious ritual. In order to share the flow of life together, they might sing that most primitive song together. When we start playing chamber music, the leader player inspire deeply as a sign of starting, as if he/she said let's start playing together. It may not be only the sign of Einsatz but also an expression to live together in the flow of life.

We are often too far from that sense of primitive communion living together. We could not live separetely. It is of no use to occupy wealth or foods by ourselves. It is against the natural rule of the flow of life. When we forget singing together in this flow of life, we could most likelily cause conflicts.

Jim, W6YA, has sent me this flashmob in the end of a year several years ago. He added saying this might serve me to restore faith in relationship with the others. It is just a video clip produced by an Italian bank. But still it could not help moving us.

Apocalypse may be realized

Houthi faction, the anti former president faction in Yemen, has attacked a nuclear power plant under construction in UAE, as the news reported this morning. It has made me surprised or rather felt the most unwanted thing had finally happened there. Now there will be more attacks to nuclear power plants in the Middle East. 

The domestic politics in Saudi Arabia seems to undergo drastic conflicts for the right to the throne there. Saudi Arabia and the allies are fighting with the anti former president faction in Yemen.

Trump administration would move the embassy of the US in Israel from Tel Abiv to Jerusalem. It would destabilize the situation around Israel, which bring forth to the war in the area.

Syria and Iraq are still in fierce terrorism and civil war. Afghanistan and kurdish areas are not exceptions of unstable situation.

Apoclypse seems to turn into reality there. It is not a problem far away from here. Our government is going to export a model of military carrier planes to UAE. It is involved in worsening the conflict in that way. Military industrial complexes are deeming Middle East to be one of the most "hopeful" markets for their products. I am afraid the western countries won't resist or suppress their export of arms to the areas in conflict. Military industrial complexes, global in its nature, are beyond control of each government in the western world. 

In this area, there is still a fear that the US military would attack North Korea in an unexpected manner. They say it won't be realized soon since the military and civilian people of the US have not been evacuated from South Korea. I am afraid, however, Trump administration would do it when they are critically relegated with the issue of Russian gate. Military action would, they know, distract the criticism to them to fanatic support of their military.

Our government won't publish the expected damage/victims due to the possible war with North Korea. It is estimated to be a few million victims if any nuclear bombs are used. Dozens of nuclear power plants along the Japan Sea are vulnerable to military attack by such as missiles from submarines. If a few of them are destructed by missiles, it would mean our country won't survive any longer. 

This realization of Apocalypse won't be localized in this area or in Middle East. It would bring us the end of the civilization of human on the earth. The terrorism and cult based nations like North Korea bieng involved, this crisis is much more serious than that in the cold war era. 

The 39th anniversary

It will be our 39th anniversary tomorrow. Such anniversary could have never been our own affairs for us. It has come, however. Time is surely flowing fast.

Starting our residency at a med school hospital, we were not involved in the sweet life of honey moon. All concern was at the training as med doctors in pediatrics for me as well as in psychiatry for my wife. No car nor TV set at the dorm those days.  No ham radio in the first year at least. The life was full with new experiences and ambition for the future.

Now we are at the last chapter of life. I am thankful to my wife for her dedication and endurance. It is my turn to make her happier from now, even though it might be a bit too late. Never too late. Believe there are good things ready for us in this chapter.

Sorry for the same photo as I posted here in the past but this one is my favorite one taken in the honey moon. She was, no, is beautiful.

It could be taken a cheating. Here is more recent one taken during the trip to Shinshyu 7 years ago. 

Happy holiday seasons to all of you, my friends.

The words a professor has left

Seven years ago, professor of Tokyo University, Yohji Totsuka, has died from colon cancer. He was a disciple of Masatoshi Koshiba, professor emeritus of the same University, a Nobel Prize awardee for quantum physics, and had been making research work regarding elementary particle after his elmer. I bet he was in his fifties then. Of course, I had no acquaintance with him but have known him only through his blog as told below.

In the process to death, he had kept a blog for months. He has written something profound in plain words in it. Once, he was asked by a person with the same illness of poor prognosis how he/she could live positively despite of the fatal illness. Professor Totsuka has answered that person to start writing/reading/listening more carefully as well as deliberately. With that effort, he/she could overcome the fear for death. He has told this in most tender manner to that person. Most affectionate way. I knew that was what he had actually been doing at that time. He also introduced words of Shiki Masaoka, one of the renowned haiku poets in japanese traditional style, who fought against tuberculosis and died in his young age. It was "To be enlightened in life is not to die well but to live well." I was most impressed how he has answered, in kind and open minded way, to the other who suffered from the same fatal illness. Very few could do such a thing in his situation. What he said sounded right and appropriate as an answer to the inquirer. It is, moreover, suggestive to us how to live and die.

It is not so soon when I should consider of dying by myself. But no one knows when it comes to us. At my age, I feel I should get ready for that. Totsuka might mean we should live well in order to die well. I feel it couldn't be too early for us to prepare for that moment.

A military conflict in this area is risky

There is a path that the US high officials enter our country without immigration check. Land on Yokota base then fly to Akasaka Press Center on a helicopter. Our governmental office has no idea how many visitors from the US are in our country.

The large mastery of the air from Kanto to Chubu area, named Yokota air space is controlled by the US. Our civil aircrafts could not access to that area.

These facts are the proof that our counry is not independent yet. President Trump has landed on Yokota but not Haneda or Narita. He has made the first address for the military personel at Yokota base in his visit to our country. Could there be any explanation other than his intention to assert that Japan is a dependency of the US?

President Trump has claimed that our government should have shot the missiles earlier this year. The missiles flied too high to be shot with the missile defence system. If he really knew of that limitation of missile defence system, he must have insisted that Japan should be a military shield against attack by NK toward the US. He also mentioned that Japan was a warrior country but not a country of peace.

He won't care for the victims, refugees and the devastating damage by any conflict between the US and NK in this area. It is estimated at least one million people would be killed in such a conflict. If our nuclear power plants are targetted for attack by NK, our country won't survive any longer. Of course, our bellicose PM Abe should be blamed for his policy of brinksmanship. Yet, hopefully, the US people and the other peoples should know how risky it is to attempt to give rise to military conflict in this area.

A step to police state

A japanese journalist, Shiori Itoh, was raped by a person, Takayuki Yamaguchi, who had been in close relationship with the Abe administration members. Yamaguchi used to be also a journalist and to have written a couple of books regarding the prime minister Abe. They were just intended to flatter Abe.

With approval for arresting Yamaguchi by the court after appropriate procedure, he was being arrested by the regional police in charge of the case, when the chief of criminal investigation in police ordered them to stop it. This chief used to be a secretary of the chief cabinet secretary in the Abe administration. The following site depicts what has happened in this case;here.

Itoh, the victim of the case, has made formal complaints about this cancellation of this arrest to the prosecution committee. But the decision by the chief of criminal investigation was not denied. This chief has been promoted in the police after hushing up this scandal.

Now a number of elites in the police are involved in the cabinet as a step for promotion. They won't go to the field work in police but get close relationship with the pliticians in the ruling party through work at the cabinet. The chief of the cabinet information research is one example, who has worked in the police for a long time and is told to be also involved in this scandal case. With close relationship with the police through these elites, the administration is gathering informations of scandal the politicians of the opposite parties or the bureaucrats resisting to the administration.

Police state is a condition for totalitarianism. I am afraid our country is lead to it.